Thursday, June 20, 2013

"Wisp of a Thing"

Alex Bledsoe is the author of the Eddie LaCrosse novels (The Sword-Edged Blonde, Burn Me Deadly, Dark Jenny and Wake of the Bloody Angel), the novels of the Memphis vampires (Blood Groove and The Girls with Games of Blood) and the Tufa novels, The Hum and the Shiver and the newly released Wisp of a Thing.

Page 69 of Wisp of a Thing is the beginning of chapter seven. Protagonist Rob Quillen has arrived in Needsville, TN, home of the mysterious and reclusive Tufa. He’s settled in at the Catamount Corner motel, and met the villain Rockhouse at the Pair-A-Dice, a local roadhouse. He’s also heard Bliss Overbay sing an original song, one that’s left him speechless.

Wisp is the follow-up to my 2011 novel The Hum and the Shiver, and once again involves the mysterious Tufa of Appalachia: a secretive people whose ancestors were already here when the first European settlers came into the mountains. They’re also an intensely musical people, for whom songs are much more than mere entertainment.

When chapter seven opens, Bliss--a trueblood Tufa--is getting off the phone with her boss, warning him that she’ll be late. She doesn’t know exactly why, but she’s learned to trust that feeling. In later pages we’ll learn that it’s somehow connected to Rob, who she has yet to actually meet at this point, although they exchanged a glance at the Pair-A-Dice.

This page is part of the parallel paths Rob and Bliss take that eventually converge, after which Rob learns the true nature of the Tufa, and his own part in their ongoing power struggles.